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Hans Camenzind, the designer of the popular 555 timer IC died this week in Silicon Valley. He was 78. My condolences to his family and friends. Hans came to the U.S. from Switzerland in 1960. He worked for a number of the early semiconductor startup companies before joining Signetics. He designed the 555 while there in 1970. The 555 was introduced in 1971 and was widely second sourced. It is not likely he actually knew he was designing what has to be the world’s most widely used IC. What EE has not used the 555 at one time or another?

Hans went on to found several companies like InterDesign and Array Design where he continued to design circuits. In the mean time, the 555 became the base IC for many designs in the 1970s and 1980s. Too bad he was not able to collect a royalty on each of the billions of chips sold..........read more in the original article here.